


Pretty As A Picture

by AdaptationDecay



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Narnia Fic Exchange 2009, Post - The Last Battle, The Problem of Susan, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-07
Updated: 2009-09-07
Packaged: 2017-10-04 11:21:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdaptationDecay/pseuds/AdaptationDecay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Susan's aunt and uncle are not much help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pretty As A Picture

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Cuban Sombrero in the 2009 Narnia Fic Exchange.
> 
> With thanks to Be_TheMoon for the beta.

She had beautiful fingernails, everybody said so.

Susan was used to receiving compliments. After all, she looked after herself carefully: made sure she was well presented. She would certainly never be caught in public with smeared make up, no matter what the provocation.

She was - by dint of extreme concentration - dry eyed now. He eye make-up was immaculate, but her beautiful fingernails had dug perfectly shaped crescents deep into her palms.

The service, when she bothered to listen, was quite a good one, but Susan's mind was already flying ahead to the reception. She'd had rather a big argument with Harold and Alberta over the food. It was all very well them saying they wanted to take a stand on principle, but some of Mother and Father's friends had driven miles to be here and would want something more substantial than the Scrubb's insipid vegetarian nibbles.

Susan liked to be fashionable, but she also had an instinctive, bone-deep understanding of the difference between fashion and fad. Her uncle and aunt didn't have a fashionable bone in either of their bodies, but they were both exceptionally faddy people. Their chief hobby - as far as Susan could see - was to object to things, ostensibly on principle, but actually just to pander to the latest fad.

She rather wished that she'd agreed to stay at Elsie's that evening, after all. Nobody would have blamed her or even said a word. Today of all days she had a perfect right to behave selfishly. She had clearly not been thinking straight when she had agreed to stay with Harold and Alberta. She hadn't even - she recalled now - liked them as a child.

These days she was very careful to draw a distinct line between Susan now and Susan as a child.

Still, the thing would have to be suffered through. Changing her plans at this late stage would undoubtedly lead to further heated words with Harold and Alberta. Besides if she were suddenly to abandon her closest relatives, perhaps argue with them, how would that look to all these people?

Susan set a great deal of store by appearances.

So at the reception she spoke to the guests one by one and made sure everybody's glass was topped up and concentrated on making herself a gracious hostess. She was inwardly complimenting herself on how well she was doing when she overheard Mr Wixon saying what a shame it was that "they'll never see her grow up."

Susan excused herself to the ladies room. When she was safely inside, she slipped off her shoe and kicked the wall very, very hard with her stockinged foot.

She was limping when she came out, but her eye make-up was still intact. Maintaining focus , that was the important thing.

Mrs Wixon was stupid anyway. Susan _was_ a grown up.

* * *

The crescent shaped marks were still visible on her hands that evening, as she stood outside the Scrubbs' back door. They didn't believe in smoking, or - it had turned out when she had gently suggested it - coffee. There wasn't a bean of it in the house and any cigarettes had to be smoked outside, under a strict injunction to pinch the stub out completely and dispose of it properly.

Fortunately it was a mild night and Susan was taking the opportunity to enjoy some time away from Harold and Alberta. She had been irritated out of all proportion by the way Alberta had said, smugly, "We don't believe in coffee." As though coffee were something from a fairy tale instead of something that stylish people drank on a regular basis and which could be bought in any shop.

Alberta didn't seem to believe in anything… except being miserable. Admittedly, she had good reason; losing your only child must be awful. But really, hadn't Susan lost more? Anyway Alberta had always been like this. Even as a child, Mother said.

Without really thinking about it, Susan had been looking up at the stars during these reflections. The back of her mind had already noted Orion and The Plough. She found herself looking vainly for constellations that didn't exist and shook her head, cross with herself.

Turning her attention to more practical things, she examined her hands. The nail marks were still there, but hadn't gone deep enough to scar. Her hands would look normal again by morning. If only everything was as easy as hands…

Susan carefully pinched the cigarette out and took the stub inside. She dropped it in the bin, then realised she needn't have bothered, as her aunt and uncle had already gone to bed. What was the point, she wondered, in being a good guest and obeying their ridiculous rules if they weren't even going to try and be good hosts?

Upstairs, Susan washed her face and brushed her teeth and changed into her nightdress. It was quite a good one. She'd sewn darts into it last month for a better fit and now anybody would think it had been made especially for her.

She paused.

Obviously she was expected to stay in the spare room, but she could still remember Lucy's alarming comments of a few years ago about a painting of a ship in the Scrubbs' spare bedroom and Susan suddenly found that she didn't want to go in there and see that painting.

She hovered on the landing. The other unoccupied room was Eustace's and that was just as unthinkable.

In the end she managed to walk into the spare room and get into bed without turning on the light. She pulled the covers up and turned to the wall, where - in the dark, with her eye make-up removed - she stopped digging crescents into her palms and crushing her toes and allowed herself to hurt in a more conventional way.

When sleep eventually came, her dreams were fragmented and confused. It began with Mrs Wixon's comment about seeing her grow up, but in her dream, Susan saw the others grow up so vividly that it didn't seem like a dream at all. She saw Peter as a grown man with a beard. She saw a blushing Lucy discussing a suitor's proposal. In her dream, she was involved in a conversation with an adult Edmund, when she heard a loud purring behind her, and turned, and saw something gold and then woke up.

Her confusion upon waking was so great that it took her some moments to realise that the Scrubbs didn't have a pet cat, (pets being another thing they didn't hold with) and that it wasn't a sound which had woken her, but the golden light spilling through the window. She hadn't closed the curtains the night before, having gone to bed in a hurry.

She'd fully expected to feel awful when she woke up and remembered the crash, but for some reason, the dream - absurd though it was - had left her feeling less miserable.

She examined her palms carefully. As predicted, the marks were gone and her hands were perfect again. Fortified by the thought, she got out of bed, intending to wash and apply make-up: the armour that would see her through another day.

As she stood, she got her first glimpse of the painting, or rather, of the new painting. Her aunt and uncle had evidently got rid of the old fashioned seascape which had given Lucy such queer notions and replaced it with a rather challenging and - as far as Susan was any judge - not very accomplished piece of modern art.

The frame was the same, but the picture inside was painted entirely black and for a moment Susan ached - absolutely ached - for one of the others to be here and laugh with her over the Scrubbs' absurdities, but a moment later she was master of herself again. She left the room without looking back at the painting and it wasn't until she reached the bathroom that she realised the crescents had reappeared on her palms.


End file.
